


float

by draculard



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ambiguous feelings toward abuser, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, But not to either Daichi or Suga, Coping with trauma, General teenage loneliness and hopelessness, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, It's just part of a horror movie that's mentioned, M/M, NOT an established relationship, Neglect, Poverty, References to Depression, Somewhat graphic description of non-con oral sex, Substance Abuse, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23725114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Volleyball is the absolute best part of Daichi's life.This fic is about the rest of it.
Relationships: Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi
Comments: 28
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

The old tobacco vending machine outside Saka no Shita Shoten hadn’t been updated yet to require ID. Daichi dug in his pocket for a couple of 100¥ coins and slotted them into the machine. It spit the cheapest pack of cigarettes out at him and he tapped it against his palm, already turning to survey the row of crumbling one-story houses behind him. 

It was just cold enough outside to make his thin athletic jacket completely useless, and things were made especially bad by the thin layer of sweat coating his skin after his run; he squared his shoulders as he lit one of the cigarettes, trying not to shiver. Standing here on the slope — looking south, toward the river — he could just barely make out the squat line of apartment buildings where Suga lived. 

He considered it. It wasn’t likely that Suga was home, not this early in the evening. Most likely, he was at old Mr. Hirosue’s house or out running errands. In truth, it was rare to find Suga at home; if he wasn’t at school or running errands, he was out in the overgrown grass lots behind his apartment building, practicing his sets. And if he wasn’t there, he still wouldn’t be home; Daichi couldn’t count the number of times he’d looked up and seen Suga sitting on the fire escape, his chin resting on the old rusted rail, his eyes far away. 

Daichi took all this into account as he finished the cigarette. The cuffs of his jacket were sticking uncomfortably to his cold, sweaty wrists, and he took a moment to adjust them before breaking out into a jog. The muscles in his thighs were heavy and quivering, refusing to pick up the pace.

It took him twenty minutes to reach the supermarket. A hand-written sign on the door prohibited activewear, so he loitered right outside, jogging in place until he could barely lift his feet. He scanned the other signs pasted to the window, some of them advertising sales. The guy who ran the store had used the wrong kanji no less than three times on these signs; Daichi may not have been a top student, but at least he was smart enough to notice things like that. 

The wind brought the scent of fried rice and sizzling fish to him, along with the pungent, rotten-algae odor of the river. He shuffled around outside the doorway, lit another cigarette.

Five minutes later, Suga pushed through the front door with his shoulder, two paper sacks loaded in his arms.

“Suga!” said Daichi. He blamed his enthusiasm on the long wait. Suga turned to him with a slow smile; he didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. “Heading to Hirosue-san’s house?” Daichi asked.

“Mm,” said Suga. He shifted the bags around, handing one to Daichi, who blinked at the strange lumpiness of the product inside; it didn’t sit comfortably in his arms at all. 

They didn’t waste time taking off; Daichi knew from experience that the shopkeeper had about a ten-minute limit on tolerating the children and teens who sometimes loitered outside. 

Hirosue’s house was one of the one-story derelicts entrenched deep in the heart of the town. It sagged downward onto the foundation, and though Daichi had only gotten occasional glimpses inside, he knew it was a mess. The panels of the shoji inside were all torn up, and the entire house smelled dusty and stale. 

“Look in your bag,” Suga said after a few minutes of walking in silence.

The top of the bag had been rolled into itself to make a handle, and it took Daichi a moment to unfold it. He peered inside, and immediately the mystery of the lumpy bag was solved: the only items inside were an enormous bottle of Shochu and three cans of Asahi Super Dry.

“Oh, nice!” Daichi said. He rolled the top of the bag back up. “Has he been paying you, then?”

Suga shrugged, a little line appearing between his eyebrows. “It’s more like a gift,” he said. “Sometimes he just hands me a thousand yen for no reason. You know how it is.”

Daichi nodded, considered making a tactful comment, decided against it. There was no tactful way to talk about Hirosue-san, really. They turned down the darkened street where Hirosue-san lived and walked to his door in silence. 

“You want me to hang back?” Daichi asked.

Suga hesitated; before he could think of an answer, Daichi retreated to the road. He leaned against the lamppost there while Suga knocked on the front door — the doorbell, they both knew, hadn’t worked in at least ten years.

He watched as the door opened and Hirosue-san — elderly, balding, but impressively tall — came out onto the front porch. He watched Suga bow and Hirosue-san nod in return; he watched the exchange of groceries, followed by a conversation Daichi couldn’t hear. After a moment, Hirosue-san looked up, his hawk-like eyes scanning the street; he frowned at Daichi for half a second before putting on a smile and throwing him a wave.

Daichi didn’t wave back. When the door closed again — Hirosue-san and his groceries safely inside — Suga jogged to the street to join him. He flashed Daichi a quick glimpse of the blister packs of pills Hirosue-san had given him, held together with rubber bands. 

“Oh, good,” said Daichi.

It didn’t _feel_ good. In reality, neither of them knew exactly what the pills were; Suga’s mom needed them, she said, to concentrate for work. As a consequence, Suga had been running errands for Hirosue-san for years — buying his groceries, helping with yardwork, fetching books and magazines Hirosue-san had ordered from the store — in return for these pills and the occasional “gift.” 

Of those gifts, the most impressive one so far was still the battered MP3 player he’d given Suga last summer. Suga’s mom still didn’t know about that one; in fact, the only person who knew was Daichi, and that was only because he’d helped Suga load it up with songs from Napster. They listened to it together sometimes, splitting the earbuds between the two of them and putting their heads close together

It was Hirosue-san who’d gotten Suga started on Shochu, too. _Cheapest hard liquor you can find,_ that’s what he said. Even Suga and Daichi could afford it, though it was almost always Suga who went out and purchased the stuff; Daichi, who of the two of them actually _looked_ twenty, still got nervous any time he brought alcohol to the checkout counter.

Suga zipped the blister packs of pills into his outer pocket and they set off, taking the back way to Suga’s apartment building. They avoided the streets and walked instead through the vast amount of empty lots in town, some of them overgrown and grassy, others barren and packed hard with dirt. It was impossible to tell how many of these were truly vacant and how many were connected to nearby houses; still, they’d been coming this way for three years now, and so far nobody had come out of those homes to yell at them.

Daichi fished in the paper bag along the way, handing Suga the bottle of Shochu and cracking open a can of Asahi Super Dry for himself. It went down a lot easier than the Shochu did; it was almost like drinking water. He knew some kids at Karasuno who drank Asahi before bed so they could fall asleep each night, and he knew others who scoffed at the very idea, because Asahi was “kids’ stuff,” like the lemon-flavored fizzy drinks he and Suga had bought when they first tried alcohol. 

Still, he liked it. They walked through the lots together, stumbling over molehills in the grass, both of them shivering a little as the temperature dropped. The Asahi can was cold enough to make it almost painful to hold, but it was warm going down Daichi’s throat, and soon that warmth spread through his whole body and left him pleasantly flushed — not too warm, not unpleasantly cold.

He glanced over at Suga, saw the pink tinge to his cheeks and knew he was feeling the same. 

“What do you wanna do after this?” Daichi asked.

Suga shrugged, his eyes far away — but before Daichi could respond to that, Suga seemed to pull himself together, throwing a sunny smile Daichi’s way. “Are your parents home?” he asked.

Daichi’s heart skipped a beat. “Kaa-san, probably,” he said, reaching automatically for another cigarette and handing Suga his beer. “Why?”

Suga held the Shochu in one hand and the Asahi Super Dry in the other. “I thought maybe we could go to your basement,” he said. 

“ _My_ basement,” Daichi repeated. He made a noise that might have been a scoff or a chuckle — even he wasn’t sure. The basement was more like a communal underground storage space for everyone on Daichi’s street, though the entrance was technically in the Sawamura backyard; it used to be a bomb shelter, but nobody thought of it that way anymore, and the old man who’d built it had long since died. Now it was filled with saggy old cardboard boxes and giant plastic tubs, all labeled with different family names, all forgotten.

There was a space, though — a little corner they’d built into their own — where some kids on Daichi’s street had squirreled away a futon cushion and some bean bags, along with a little table that pretty much everyone used as a TV stand. The TV itself was ancient — somebody in town had bought it in the late 70s or 80s and left it on the curb two years ago — but it still hooked up to a VCR player and played alright.

“Sure,” said Daichi. He clicked his lighter a few times, struggling to wring a flame from it. “What do you want to watch?”

Suga thought it over, sampling Daichi’s beer. “We can swing by my place,” he said. “We haven’t watched _Gini Piggu_ in a long time.”

“Ech,” Daichi said, making a face. He’d just managed to get his cigarette lit when Suga said the words “Gini Piggu,” and now he couldn’t muster up even a minor sense of triumph. “That movie’s nasty, Suga, that’s why we haven’t watched it in a while.”

Suga laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah…”

Daichi didn’t know where Suga had acquired half the videos he had; they were almost all from the 80s and 90s, and exclusively horror movies. But the _Guinea Pig_ movies were the worst; the first one was non-stop torture porn, full of the most evil things Daichi could imagine. Needles going through eyes, hot oil poured onto bare skin, maggots eating away at open wounds. They hadn’t watched it since their first year at Karasuno, when Daichi had been so freaked out by the movie — and by Suga’s enthusiastic enjoyment of it — that he’d side-eyed Suga suspiciously for a solid week afterward. 

He sneaked a glance at Suga, who was doing his best not to look disappointed.

“You really want to watch it?” Daichi asked.

Suga smiled brightly. He knew he’d won, but he was gracious about it. “Yeah,” he said. “We can watch _Kyua_ afterward.”

 _Kyua_ , Daichi’s favorite, wasn’t even really horror, but it was creepy enough to pass muster by Suga’s definition. He nodded agreement, alternating between long drags on his cigarette and occasional sips of beer. Beside him, Suga used both hands to heft the giant bottle of Shochu over his head, tipping an obscene amount of it into his mouth. 

“Let’s go, then,” he said when he’d swallowed; his voice was a little raspy, and Daichi had no doubt his throat was burning. “I’ll race you there.”

Daichi flicked his cigarette into the grass and forced his heavy legs into a run.

* * *

Suga’s mom was home when they reached his apartment, both of them gasping for air but trying to be quiet about it. Daichi’s ears were freezing from the cold, and his hands felt numb and raw all at the same time; he slipped through the front door silently, following Suga. Neither of them turned on the lights.

In the living room, Suga’s mom was passed out on the futon; an ashtray on the floor near her hand was laden with used-up cigarette butts. It looked like it hadn’t been emptied in days — and just as Daichi’s eyes landed on it, Suga bent down and silently scooped it up, bringing it with him to the open area that served as their kitchen.

He dumped it in the trash, simultaneously grabbing a small bag of discount Kara Mucho off the counter. Daichi tip-toed past the kitchen to the hallway cabinet, where Suga kept most of his possessions. The video tapes were tucked away there, and he grabbed _Gini Piggu_ and _Kyua_ right away, cast a doubtful eye over the rest of them, hesitated, and grabbed _Ringu_ , too. Just in case. The cardboard cases of the VHS tapes were worn and falling apart, making them feel unusually soft and fragile in Daichi’s hand.

“Doesn’t your mom have work tonight?” he whispered as Suga came to stand next to him.

Suga only shrugged, taking the VHS tapes from Daichi and slipping them into his backpack. They went back to the den together, where Suga tossed a blanket over his mother and rooted around in the ancient entertainment center before finally pulling out his notes from school. Daichi’s lips twitched; of _course_ Suga was bringing his notes to the basement.

“Okay,” he whispered, “come on, Mr. Honor Roll. Let’s go.”

Other than Suga’s schoolbooks, the entertainment center was empty. The TV sat atop it, outdated and dusty, and the VCR sat along the side. The Sugawaras had never updated to a DVD player, and sometimes Daichi suspected they were never going to. Not when all Sugawara-san watched was daytime TV and all Suga watched was ancient horror tapes. 

Of course, the Sawamuras weren’t much better. Their most expensive purchase was probably the PlayStation they’d got when Daichi was six; it was still the only gaming console they had. For years, he’d been telling friends they couldn’t come over to play video games, too embarrassed to let them see the dusty, malfunctioning piece of hardware and the outdated stacks of games.

With Suga, it was different, though. Even if Suga were rich — even if he had his own PS3 or Nintendo DS like the other guys at school — he wouldn’t look down his nose at Daichi. Neither of them cared that much about video games, anyway, though Daichi could never be sure if this was a natural character trait or if it was something born out of their lack of access to all the new, cool things everyone else was playing.

The thing about Suga was that he was happy no matter what he had. He was fine with watching ancient VHS tapes on a shitty TV; he loved getting discount snacks from the convenience store, no matter how stale they were. He bought the cheapest beer and Shochu and didn’t mind the taste.

And he was fine with just being a sub in the game — he was fine being #13 in school instead of #1 — and he’d probably be fine living in this town forever, working some low-paying job that just barely paid his rent, and doing it anyway because he loved the work.

He’d probably be a teacher or something, Daichi mused. Underpaid and underappreciated. And Daichi would do what all ex-athletes did when they left school; he’d join the military, maybe the police — something that wore him out the same way volleyball did.

Something that kept him busy when he was awake; something that exhausted him, that helped him sleep.

Daichi finished off the last, flat dregs of Asahi Super Dry; across the room, Suga bent over his mother, kissing her on the forehead while she slept. When he straightened up, Daichi saw he’d left the blister pack of pills in her hand.

“Let’s go,” Suga said.

* * *

“Several years ago,” said Suga, covering his eyes, “I obtained a private video under the title Guinea Pig. Its commentary said that 'this is a report of an experiment on the breaking point of bearable pain and the corrosion of people's senses'... but it was, in fact, an exhibition of devilish cruelty as three perpetrators severely abused a woman.”

Daichi kept his gaze on the old TV screen, reading the opening crawl. Suga was reciting it word-for-word.

“Oi, how many times have you watched this without me?” Daichi asked, elbowing Suga in the ribs. Grinning, Suga removed his hand from his eyes.

“It’s not fair to ask me that,” he said. “I had it before I met you.”

The opening text faded away, revealing grainy footage of a woman hanging in a net. Daichi and Suga watched for a moment, expressionless, then looked at each other.

“Should we skip ahead?” Suga asked. Daichi leaned back in an understuffed bean-bag chair, cracking open another beer.

“Yeah,” he said. “This part’s boring.”

Suga leaned forward, hitting the fast-forward button and staying there, his eyes on the TV screen and his hands on the VCR, until they were about one-third through the movie. He punched the play button and crawled backward to the futon cushion, picking up his bottle of Shochu as he went.

Overhead, they could dimly hear the sound of Daichi’s family walking around, his little brother and sister stomping everywhere they walked. Suga watched as the men onscreen ripped off the woman’s fingernails; there was a pleasant, slightly blurred effect to his face, no doubt caused by the alcohol — but he looked just the same watching this borderline-snuff film as he did watching a spectacular volleyball match. 

When they got to the next scene — a placard over the film helpfully labeled it “Burn” — Suga watched for a few seconds more and then reluctantly pulled out his notebooks and got to work. Reclined in the bean bag, Daichi slid his gaze away from the TV and watched Suga instead.

The combination of cigarette smoke and light beer made Daichi’s head swim, but it felt good, too. It felt like sinking into bed after a long, long day. His muscles still ached from his run earlier, and his stomach felt weirdly heavy even though he’d skipped dinner, but still, it was all like a pleasant background noise. Like a happy buzz in the back of his mind.

Maybe that was just because of where he was, who he was with. Even _Guinea Pig_ didn’t bother him today.

Sighing, Daichi slumped back in the bean bag chair and watched the cigarette smoke furl over his head. He could hear the scratch of Suga’s pen, the almost-inaudible _clink_ of the Shochu bottle being picked up and put back down again. 

Minutes ticked by. Daichi measured the time by the number of cigarettes he went through and the amount of beer still left in the can; he finished the first one off quickly and pulled off the tab so he could use it as an ashtray instead of flicking his ashes onto the concrete floor.

He was about halfway through the next one when the movie reached its final act and Suga suddenly spoke.

“You know,” he said, “I almost didn’t go to high school.”

Daichi’s finger slipped off the tab, peeling his fingernail back. He hissed and shook out the pain, throwing Suga an incredulous look at the same time. “But you’re smart,” he said. It sounded idiotic to say that out loud, but it was all he could think of, and it was true.

Suga, of course, only smiled at him. “I know,” he said, “but…”

He shrugged. His eyes fixed on the TV, but now they were glazed, like he didn’t see or hear the gruesome scene before him. He turned back to Daichi and shrugged again, that smile on his face growing sheepish.

“But high school’s expensive,” he said, “and I didn’t really want to go. I thought maybe I would just get a job, help out around the house. I just didn’t want to go through another year of school.”

His notebook was open before him, displaying his English homework. Daichi glanced down at it, noting — not for the first time — the perfect handwriting and the countless words he didn’t recognize himself, despite being in the same year. He couldn’t think of any particular ambitions Suga had — certainly not any that required higher education. And it wasn’t like Suga’s family had ever stopped being broke; even now, he worked after school most days and did errands for Hirosue-san on the side.

“What stopped you?” Daichi asked. “I mean, why keep going, then, if you really didn’t want to?”

The video whirred to a stop. Suga shuffled forward on his knees and held down the rewind button.

“Volleyball,” he said, his back to Daichi. “It was the only part of middle school I really liked. Volleyball, soccer, art…”

Daichi winced. Suga was awful at art. He wasn’t too great at soccer, either.

“They were just…” Suga’s shoulders lifted, but he kept his hands on the VCR. “They were just fun. And everything else wasn’t.”

They listened to the whine of the VHS as it wound backward, and Daichi stared at the back of Suga’s head, forgetting about his beer and cigarette. As for himself, he’d stayed in school because it simply never occurred to him to stop. Nobody in his middle school had dropped out after their third year; sure, it was legal, but nobody actually _did_ it. 

If the option had occurred to him, though, what would have kept him going? He turned an unlit cigarette over between his fingers, rubbing the pad of his thumb along the end of it. After a moment, he put it between his lips and let it dangle there, just enjoying the taste of tobacco on his tongue.

It would have been sports, probably. Baseball, volleyball — basketball, even, if he hadn’t gotten into a decent volleyball school. He tracked over the classes he took, but none of them were particularly interesting, and none of them stuck out. Certainly, he wouldn’t have kept going for the curriculum.

Still, to hear Suga say it so bluntly — that volleyball was fun, and everything else wasn’t — stung Daichi in a peculiar way, like somebody had sunk an arrow right between his ribs. He had volleyball and he had Suga, and that was all.

The whirring of the VCR stopped with a clunk. Suga ejected the tape, turned back to Daichi with a smile.

“You haven’t had any Shochu yet!” he said, pointing at the half-empty bottle. “You have to do a shot before we start the next one, okay?”

Daichi smiled. The cigarette dropped from between his lips and bounced off his chest, making Suga’s grin grow wider.

“Okay,” Daichi said. “Hand it here.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated so make sure you read them again! This chapter covers some heavier stuff than the first chapter did.

He was the oldest student in Karasuno’s painting class, all because he’d chosen the much less popular calligraphy course for both his first and second year  — in that class, there had been only the teacher, Suga, and two other students, neither of whom put a particular amount of effort into that calligraphy.

That class had gotten Suga used to being the best at something, in a small sense. Out of three students, he was the best at calligraphy. Not #2, not #5, not (he thought of his class ranking) #13. He was the best, and though it really didn’t matter in the end  — it wasn’t like he’d ever use this skill in real life  — it still made him think back on calligraphy fondly; it put a little bounce in his step when he was feeling down.

As such, it was a little disconcerting to be back in yet another class where he was just middle-of-the-road. He was better than the first years who took this class just for an easy passing grade; he was notably worse than the first years who took this class because he had some modicum of talent. 

Worse, the teacher had no idea what to do with him  — only a handful of second and third years took advanced art courses, and Okushiba-sensei was used to giving them almost complete freedom, with just a little guidance here and there. In Suga’s first week of painting, he’d been ushered into the storage room off the side of the classroom, where all the pastels and paints were kept  — “For privacy,” Okushiba-sensei told him. “So you don’t have the underclassmen peering over your shoulder all the time.”

Suga still couldn’t figure this out. He’d been put into the advanced art curriculum purely by accident  — and he couldn’t tell if it was because Okushiba-sensei thought he was self-conscious or if Okushiba-sensei gave all third years their own private room to use.

(Not that it was  _ that _ private; Suga was still interrupted at least five times per class by first years coming into the storage room to get a new paintbrush. He looked forward to each interruption intensely; it was lonely in there). 

Today, he stood before the easel in the storage room, a piece of charcoal in his hand and a massive canvas before him. Okushiba-sensei had told him to come up with his own projects; well, the previous year’s art students had all done super-huge 3-D charcoal pieces, and they’d hung in the halls of the school all the way until graduation. Suga couldn’t think of anything cooler than that, and he had the perfect idea for it  — an undead hand clawing its way out of the canvas, reaching for a victim to eat.

The unfortunate part was that he was awful at charcoal, and worse at drawing in 3-D, and even more terrible at drawing hands. He’d spent an entire class period earlier this week just posing in front of a camera, covering his face with one hand and holding the other one out toward the lens, like  _ he _ was the zombie. All the pictures turned out too terrible to use as a reference.

Still, it was fun. It was good work; his mind just sailed away when he was drawing, and he could think about absolutely nothing for all 50 minutes until class was up. And he didn’t have to worry one  _ bit _ about a teacher calling on him while his mind was gone. 

He thought about that night two days ago when he and Daichi sat in the basement, watching old horror movies well into the early morning. Neither of them bothered to go home after that; they’d woken up at 6 a.m., groggy from lack of sleep and both of them a little hungover, and they’d walked to volleyball practice together in silence.

Suga liked mornings like that. He knew Daichi didn’t see it, but there was something so beautiful about Karumai that Suga couldn’t put it into words  — and it was visible all the time, but especially so in the early morning, when the sun was just barely coming up and mist was clinging to the banks of the river. Walking to school like that, Suga couldn’t bear to talk. Talking would ruin it; he needed to feel the dew from the grass soaking into his tennis shoes, and he had to make sure he saw it when the sun first came up and flinted off the river. 

Some days he put his earbuds in while he walked. Daichi had helped him download the songs, but there were some files Suga had found all on his own, and in the mornings, those files were all he could listen to  — instrumental music from the soundtrack of a depressing Chinese film he’d never dared show to Dachi, the wooden flutes, violins and piano threading together to make something mournful and hopeful and melancholy and bright all at the same time.

That was the perfect way to walk through Karumai. It was good to walk through without music, too  — to hear the birds coming awake and water trickling from old drain pipes and store clerks unlocking their doors  — but it was best with the music. 

Standing in front of his charcoal drawing, Suga sighed. The zombie hand was coming out fat and pale, with fingers about the size and length of misshapen onigiri. The rest of the canvas was completely dark, which he realized now, with a wry, self-deprecating smile, was a mistake. A whole canvas full of nothing but dead black night! Well, he couldn’t change it now.

Turning, Suga wiped his hands on a dirty dishcloth hanging from a nearby cabinet. He was just about to select another piece of charcoal when the door to the storage room opened and an underclassmen breezed in, going straight to the sliding doors which hid cubby after cubby of art supplies.

“Osu, Suga-san,” the first year said perfunctorily.

“Mm,” Suga said, still considering the charcoal. He rubbed it between his fingers, getting lost for a moment in the way the little grey particles got stuck in his fingerprints, digging themselves deep into the lines of his skin. He heard the underclassmen  — Tabuchi, that was his name  — rummaging through the cubbies and closing the sliding door again.

But then Tabuchi didn’t leave. There was no sound of the storage room door opening and closing; after a moment, Suga looked over his shoulder and saw Tabuchi still standing there, awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot.

“Tabuchi-kun,” said Suga, trying not to show any of the mild surprise or confusion he felt. 

Tabuchi hesitated just a moment longer. With a quick bow  — still facing the floor  — he said, “I have some clothes, Suga-san, if you want them. I can bring them to school and give them to you before or after class.”

He pulled out of his bow, meeting Suga’s eyes with more boldness than he expected. In fact, now that he’d made his offer, Tabuchi didn’t look nervous at all.

“Clothes?” Suga repeated. He looked down at his art smock, an old t-shirt he’d pulled from the storage space under Daichi’s house, where a few people had left behind boxes when they moved away. “These aren’t my regular clothes, Tabuchi-kun. They’re supposed to be a little grimy, you know.”

“I know,” said Tabuchi. He didn’t smile back when Suga smiled at him. “I mean your regular clothes  — your uniform. I have some extras. And regular clothes, too, not school clothes. I just figured — ” Suga’s chest was very cold suddenly. He let his gaze slide back to the charcoal canvas, but he didn’t see anything. He felt certain his face must be very hot; in fact, he was a little bit pale. “ — you might need them,” Tabuchi continued, “since your uniform is a little … you know … well, you wear the same one pretty much every day, and it’s a little worn.”

Suga stared at the zombie hand reaching out to him. With numb fingers, he raised a bit of charcoal and adjusted the line of the zombie’s thumb. It didn’t help much.

“Suga-san?” Tabuchi asked. “Should I bring them after school?”

Suga struggled to find his voice, but when he spoke, he sounded steady, cheerful, calm. “No, thank you, Tabuchi-kun. I don’t need anything; I’m graduating soon, anyway.”

And, though he was too polite to point it out, he and Tabuchi weren’t exactly of a compatible size. He’d be swimming in the underclassman’s clothes.

Tabuchi thought it over quietly, no doubt debating whether to accept Suga’s refusal or to keep pushing. In the end, he took a single step toward the door, paused, and said, “Your uniform jacket needs mended, then. Just so you know. The shoulder seam is coming apart.”

Suga hadn’t thought of a response yet by the time Tabuchi left. He continued working on the zombie’s thumb, his thoughts far away. His face was so placid that anyone walking in would think he was having a pleasant daydream, but he couldn’t seem to unclench his jaw.

By the time the class ended, his teeth were aching and the charcoal zombie looked worse than ever before.

* * *

Like he always did, he’d eaten his packed lunch directly after morning practice and before school, to make sure he had enough energy to stay awake. Now, with lunch hour upon him, Suga had two options: he could retreat to the courtyard to study or he could go around back to the bleachers.

First, though, he had to make sure he didn’t fall asleep in the evening. He dug a handful of coins out of his pocket  — thank God for Hirosue-san  — and slotted them into the machine right outside the gymnasium. This was the only vending machine on school grounds that sold energy drinks and coffee. Suga selected Kyokyo Daha, the most heavily-caffeinated option available, and collected the slim, black can from the compartment at the bottom of the machine.

Dirt speckled the rim of the can, and Suga stood there for a moment, absently digging it out with his thumbnail, which he had wrapped up in the tail of his shirt. He did this all with his eyes fixed on the baseball club; it seemed like more than half the team was taking advantage of lunchtime to get some practice in. It wasn’t hot out, but there were all sweating under the March sun, school uniforms clinging to their thighs as they ran.

Feeling guilty  — though he wasn’t sure why  — Suga turned away and practically poured the Kyokyo Daha down his throat, relishing the chemical sting of it as it went down. Drinks like this always made his throat hurt, but it was worth it. And he could only afford them about once a week, so it wasn’t like he was doing any permanent damage. 

He considered his options  — courtyard or bleachers  — and headed for the courtyard. There, all clustered together around the same table, were the school’s top five students. They were all laughing together, not studying, but Suga couldn’t blame them for that. All five were lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on your point of view) to attend cram school each evening; this wasn’t something Suga could afford, but it also wasn’t something he wanted to do. He couldn’t deny it got the Top 5 great results, though; none of them ever seemed to struggle with coursework, and they were all studying ahead by at least two months. 

Suga started to walk toward them, then hesitated. He’d been in an academic club with all five of them his first year; they were friendly for the most part, if a little competitive. And they were funny, and unabashedly geeky. But something stopped him from going over to them; despite their many positive traits, he couldn’t pretend that any of these people were his friends.

Not for the first time, he wished he and Daichi were in the same lunch block. He glanced around the courtyard, searching for any familiar faces, and his eyes landed on Tabuchi-kun. His jaw locked up; his throat tightened. For a long time, Suga couldn’t look away.

Then, stiffly, he checked his watch. There were still thirty-five minutes left in lunch break; he made his way back from the courtyard to the bike shelter off the side of the school and searched for a moment until he found Hinata’s distinctive bike parked with the rest. 

He’d borrowed it before. It wasn’t a big deal. Scrawling a hasty note and leaving it taped to the rack, Suga took the bike and headed for Hirosue-san’s house, his energy drink in his left hand and his right hand firmly on the handlebars.

It was too cold to be riding down the mountain slope on a bicycle, but that was part of what made it so fun. The wind turned Suga’s ears to painful lumps of ice and it pushed down his throat and turned everything inside him to glass, until he felt almost like the ancient shipwrecks sometimes found perfectly preserved in the Arctic Sea. He let gravity pull him down towards Karumai at a fantastic, heady speed, everything whirring past him so fast it was a blur  — the river, the old decaying buildings, the bus station and the peeling advertisements in shop windows  — all of it turned into one exhilarating cloud of high-speed color and sound.

He tightened his grip on the handlebars and veered off down Hirosue-san’s street, where his momentum finally petered out and he was forced to pedal. He loved riding a bike; he’d had one himself, when he was in elementary school one town over and had to get himself to class in the morning. When he got a real job, a full-time job  — when he and Kaa-san had a little more spending money  — a new bike would be his first purchase. 

He knew exactly which one he’d buy, too. There was a sunny yellow mountain bike at the bicycle shop in Kanegasaki, and it looked competent and cheerful all at the same time, like it could handle any terrain and it would be happy doing so  — though of course, Suga knew there was no such thing as a “happy bike” or a “sad bike.” 

He would mount a wire basket on the back of it for grocery trips, he decided, now thoroughly lost in the daydream. And of course, he’d save up and buy one of those sleek biking jackets for winter riding  — probably also in yellow  — and he’d get wind-resistant gloves so his hands wouldn’t go numb in the cold, like they were now.

Hirosue-san’s house loomed out at him, coming up so fast Suga almost missed it. He slowed to a stop, careful not to stress Hinata’s brakes, and swung the bike back around to park it on Hirosue-san’s yard. Legs shaky from the ride over, he bounded up the steps of Hirosue-san’s front porch, almost dropping his energy drink in the process, and rapped on the front door.

It was a long, tense minute before Hirosue-san answered. He cracked open the door just as Suga was checking his watch, a rancid-smelling cigarette dangling from his lips. There were liver spots dotting his scalp and tobacco stains on his fingers.

“Come in,” Hirosue-san said, standing aside to let Suga pass. Suga squeezed through the barely-open door and took a few steps into the stale-smelling house before he stopped and turned to face Hirosue-san. 

“Hirosue-san,” he said with a quick, deep bow, “do you have any errands for me? I’m free for half an hour.”

The old man puffed on his cigarette for a moment, not answering. His hawk-like eyes were fixed on Suga. “Out of pills already?” he said finally. 

Suga hesitated a little before deciding to be honest. “No,” he said. “But I needed something to do. Maybe we can count it toward the next batch?”

Hirosue-san’s eyes flashed; Suga couldn’t be sure if the emotion in them was anger or heightened interest. He watched as Hirosue-san’s gaze flicked down to Suga’s wrist  — then further, examining Suga’s uniform trousers. Suga tried not to squirm under that stare, but he couldn’t help but look down, checking his trousers for unseemly wrinkles or grass stains. 

When he finally glanced up, Hirosue-san was still watching him, his face unreadable. A puff of smoke emerged from between the old man’s dry, cracked lips.

“How much time do you have?” he asked. 

Suddenly, Suga’s stomach felt like a black hole, heavy and light all at the same time. He looked down at his watch, but had trouble comprehending the numbers.

“Uh…” he said. “Twenty minutes, I think.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hirosue-san’s hands moving. Suga kept his gaze locked firmly on the watch, his mouth dry and his eyes wide. He’d stepped too far into this, he realized that now. Although he refused to look directly at Hirosue-san, he could tell that the old man’s hands were working at his belt buckle.

And although he’d known  — he’d always known  — he still wasn’t prepared to deal with it now. He’d been working for Hirosue-san for years, and the worst that had happened was in the summer, when Hirosue-san asked him to do yardwork and insisted it was too hot for Suga to wear a shirt. He’d fooled himself into believing that was the worst that ever would happen; that in a warped sense, he was safe. That he could deal with whatever Hirosue-san came up with.

He heard the zip of Hirosue-san’s trousers opening. Reluctantly, Suga looked up from his watch, eyeing the cheap underwear that was now on display. There was a small hole forming under the elastic waistband; the material was discolored from age.

“Hirosue-san,” said Suga, his voice sounding strange and foreign to him, “I don’t know if we have time for that.”

Hirosue-san just grunted, shooting Suga an unimpressed look. “You want those pills, don’t you?” he said.

Suga hesitated. He couldn’t think of any protest  — at least, no protests that would get him out of this while simultaneously keeping Hirosue-san’s position as his mother’s supplier intact. And it was impossible to think when Hirosue-san so obviously wasn’t listening, when he was already pushing down the waistband of his briefs and revealing a thatch of pubic hair, his cock already halfway hard.

“Well, come on, boy,” said Hirosue-san irritably. “You don’t have all day.”

Still, Suga didn’t move. His palms were cold and sweating.

“Look,” said Hirosue-san, shelving his irritation in favor of a more calm, persuasive manner, “you’ve always wanted to try this, haven’t you? I’ve known since you were eleven. You think I didn’t see the way you look at your little friends? That Sawamura boy who hangs around you all the time?”

Suga felt blood rush to his face; for a moment, he was so mortified  — so horrified, really, that somebody had noticed, that his biggest secret had been so obviously on display  — that he forgot entirely that Hirosue-san stood before him, looking ludicrous with his pants undone and his penis hanging out.

“I…” Suga said, hesitating, unable to think.

“You’re of age, aren’t you?” said Hirosue-san reasonably. “You want to try it, don’t you?”

Suga wanted to  — but couldn’t  — say no. Miserably, he nodded. A voice inside him shouted that it wasn’t fair, that he was being completely misunderstood, that he didn’t want  _ this, _ but he couldn’t form that voice to turn into audible, real-life words.

“So come over here,” said Hirosue-san, brisk and cold again. “And be mindful of the time.”

Suga came forward, his footsteps silent. He knelt before Hirosue-san, legs trembling, lips pinched shut. Looking down into Suga’s face, Hirosue-san gave him a quick, charming smile.

“We don’t want you showing up late to school,” he said.

* * *

He avoided Tabuchi-kun’s eyes the next morning, going straight to the storage room as soon as he arrived at the painting class. With the door closed behind him, he looked at the black canvas and the lumpy zombie hand reaching out to him. 

It looked okay, Suga thought tentatively. It wasn’t great, but you could tell it was a hand. You just couldn’t really tell it was a zombie; instead of clawing its way out of the canvas to snatch a victim, it looked more like somebody unseen was reaching out to the viewer for help.

He sighed, feeling in his pocket for the MP3 player Hirosue-san had given him. He put one earbud in and left the other one wrapped around the slim black device, so he could still hear the sound of voices murmuring outside.

Silently, he slid open the door that hid the cubbies. Some of the little plastic boxes were filled with colored pencils; others were filled with paintbrushes, or with pastels, or with blending sticks or sponges. Suga opened each one in turn, gazing curiously at the contents, sometimes shuffling through them with no particular goal in mind.

Then he opened another cubby and found it filled with Xacto knives, the blades separated from the handles and carefully organized.

He picked one up, slotted the blade into place, watched the dim light from overhead gleam off the edge of it. Images from various horror movies swam sluggishly through his mind; he pressed the tip of his blade against the pad of his finger and watched a white, blood-less cut form.

It hurt, but it kind of felt good, too. After yesterday, he hadn’t felt anything at all. He’d returned Hinata’s bike to school and then he’d stood outside the doors, his feet glued to the ground, unable to move as the seconds ticked by and the old-fashioned church bell chimed to signify the start of class. In the end, he’d walked back home, collapsing on the futon where Kaa-san had slept the night before, staring blankly at a TV that wasn’t even turned on.

With the little Xacto blade slicing through his skin just a little, he suddenly remembered the wind on his face as he’d glided downhill on Hinata’s bicycle yesterday  — the sound of the birds waking up in the morning  — the dew soaking into his shoes.

His heart thumped and seemed to come alive again. He pried the blade out of the handle again and stood there a moment, just staring at it. 

Okushiba-sensei didn’t keep inventory of the supplies. He never forced students to write down what equipment they’d checked out. If the Xacto knife went missing, he’d never notice. He’d never know.

Filling his lungs  — and really feeling, really appreciating how it felt to take a deep breath  — Suga slipped the Xacto knife into his pocket and closed the closet door.


	3. Chapter 3

He stared at his flip phone, at Suga’s number — his thumb hovered over the “Text” button, but still he hesitated. Not because he didn’t want to talk to Suga; because he wasn’t sure he wanted to waste the minutes. Eventually, reluctantly, he forced himself to close the phone and put it back down on his desk.

He could always walk to Suga’s place, he told himself. It wasn’t as easy as just texting him (especially since Suga was never actually  _ at _ his place, and Daichi invariably had to search high and low to find him) but it was better than using up another minute when he was already so low he wouldn’t be able to respond if Suga texted him back.

Exhaling slowly through his nose, Daichi stood and snagged one of his dad’s old windbreakers off the hanger. He shrugged it on as he left the house, stopping on the doorstep to yank his sneakers onto his feet — he never bothered to untie them, preferring to kick them off when he got home each day.

Standing outside his front door — jumping from toe to toe — Daichi ran through a quick series of stretches, keeping in constant motion the whole time. It was early enough in the day that the sun was bright but the air was still cool, giving everything around him a washed-out, white-gold look. As he bent down to touch his toes, the sun seemed to blaze right through his jacket, kissing his shoulder blades even as the cold air set him sniffling. 

He straightened up, shook the static out of his eyes, and took off at a brisk jog. It took his legs a few minutes to loosen up, his muscles seizing up for just a second before they started to unknot themselves. He loved that moment — that brief minute or two at the start of any workout where his body tried to turn against him, where it protested (however weakly) before giving in. 

His mind went blank as he ran, barely registering the nearly-empty streets, the closed shops, the wooden signs banging against plastic siding. For ten minutes, he completely forgot to keep an eye out for Suga; in fact, he forgot all his goals — he forgot about the attic, he forgot about the dwindling minutes on his phone, he forgot about the handful of coins rattling around in his wallet and the shift at the somen shop he’d been forced to give up so he could watch his brother and sister while his parents were at work. 

For ten minutes, all that mattered was the muted sound of his sneakers against the blacktop, the painful, wind-chilled out-and-in of his lungs as he gasped for air, the thrum of his heart in his ears. 

Then, abruptly, he was at Suga’s apartment building. He stopped suddenly, his thigh muscles screaming, his throat feeling hollowed out and cold, then forced himself to jog in place until his heart rate calmed down. A moment later, the front door pushed open and a woman came out, dressed in the old-fashioned skirted uniform worn by all women who worked at the dairy factory one town over. 

She rummaged in her purse for a moment, found her bus pass, looked up and caught Daichi’s eye. A doubtful smile tugged at her lips, and only then did Daichi recognize her.

“Sugawara-san,” he gasped, swooping into a quick bow.

“Daichi-kun?” asked Suga’s mother. “What are you doing here?” Before he could answer, she gave him a wry look and said, “Looking for Koushi?”

He hesitated, suddenly and irrationally feeling like he shouldn’t say. It was almost like telling a complete stranger that he was looking for Suga; in their three years of friendship, he’d mostly seen Suga’s mom when she was asleep or so zoned out she might as well be unconscious. It was peculiar to see her like this, awake and completely put-together, just starting her day. 

“He’s on the fire escape somewhere,” said Suga’s mom, gesturing vaguely at the latticework of rusted platforms which lined the building. She was rummaging in her purse again, quickly losing interest in Daichi. She pulled out a battered flip phone not much older than the one in Daichi’s room and started to walk away even as she opened it and checked her texts. 

“Don’t get into any mischief,” she said as she passed Daichi, but he could tell from her far-away tone that she was already on the bus and on her way to work, mentally. 

He angled his head up and scanned the fire escapes, looking for Suga’s dangling feet. It wasn’t until he’d rounded the corner into an alleyway strewn with forgotten paper lanterns and garlands stripped by poor winter weather that he spotted the familiar sneakers dangling overhead.

“Suga!” he called up.

Suga folded his arms on the lower rung of the railing and rested his chin on them, peering down at Daichi. When he processed who he was looking at, his face lit up and he pushed to his feet, coming down the fire escape with a terrible clanging noise of rusted iron bars scraping against each other. He took his time coming down, even though he looked like he wanted to run; only on the last two flights did he speed up; he jumped down past the last ten stairs, landing not far from Daichi and tumbling backward into the dirt.

“Oof,” he said, at the same time Daichi said,

“Idiot.”

But they were both laughing. Suga pushed himself out of the dirt and stood there a moment, chuckling and dusting off his trousers. He didn’t notice the helping hand Daichi held out to him while he was down, and by the time he looked up, Daichi had stuck both hands in his pockets instead. 

“You wanna help me move?” Daichi asked.

The grin wiped away from Suga’s face; his eyebrows rose up incrementally. “You’re moving?” he asked.

“Just upstairs,” said Daichi, shrugging one shoulder. “To the attic.”

“Oh.” For a moment, Suga’s eyes tracked past Daichi, gazing sightlessly at the crumbling alley walls. When he came back, there was nothing on his face but plain old curiosity. “Why upstairs?” he asked. “Don’t you hate it up there?”

Daichi may or may not have professed his hatred for the attic a handful of times in the past. He shrugged again, unsure how to explain it. “I guess I just hated it because it’s so dirty,” he said. “But lately I’ve been thinking, once you clean it up, it may not be so bad.”

Suga only stared at him, eyes wide and gentle and inviting. Suddenly feeling awkward — suddenly feeling  _ listened _ to, which was always a peculiar feeling — Daichi looked down at his sneakers, now scuffed with dirt. 

“Well,” he said, “it’ll be nice to have a change, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” said Suga, immediately and emphatically. Daichi’s eyes darted up; when he saw the genuine understanding on Suga’s face, he relaxed a little. “So you need help?”

“If you don’t mind,” Daichi said. Already, Suga was walking past him to the mouth of the alley.

“I don’t mind,” he said as Daichi fell into step beside him. “What all do you want to do?”

It was a long list, Daichi knew, but he felt secure in the knowledge that Suga would help him all the way, even though his parents had told him quite firmly he was on his own for this project.  _ Just what you need before you graduate,  _ his dad had said.  _ Project all of your own, bit of hard work to prove you’re not a child.  _ It was like he’d forgotten Daichi was captain of the volleyball club — or like he remembered and didn’t think that counted as hard work.

“Rip up the carpet,” he said, “and then the tatami mats underneath so it’s just hardwood floors. Take apart the old dresser up there and get rid of all the extra furniture and boxes lying around. Get rid of the curtains, sweep, mop — and then I want to start moving stuff from my room up there.”

Suga only nodded. His lips were set into a pleasant little smile, which seemed to be his default expression when he was walking through town. Even though he was listening to Daichi, his eyes were glazed — like his mother’s had been, but fundamentally different in some way Daichi couldn’t define — and it was clear he was listening to the trickling of the river, too, and the chime of a bicyclist riding past, and the opening and closing back doors of shops and houses all along the street.

“You skipped school without me Wednesday,” said Daichi, his tone mock-disappointed.

“Mm,” said Suga. The little smile on his lips faded, leaving his face blank.

“I bet you just wanted to watch Rock Video Monthly alone so you could sing along without anyone spying on you,” Daichi said. Suga chuckled, a quick, automatic sound that wasn’t at all convincing. Something inside Daichi’s stomach turned over; he decided to drop it. “You want to stop by the supermarket first?” he asked instead. “Grab some beer?”

Suga gave him a rueful smile. “I don’t have any money,” he said.

“None?” asked Daichi. He pulled out his wallet, counted his coins. “I have about three hundred yen here. We could pool it together.”

Suga dug in his pocket and pulled out two coins: 100¥ altogether. He scanned the coins in Daichi’s hand while Daichi scanned the coins in Suga’s, both of them simultaneously coming to the same depressing conclusion.

“Well,” said Daichi, “we could shoplift.”

He was only halfway serious. Suga didn’t even pick up on the ‘halfway’ part. His eyes widened as his head shot up.

“Daichi,” he said, “you can’t start shoplifting! People will think you’re a gangster!”

Offended, Daichi said, “Only if I get caught.”

Suga gave him a doubtful look that seemed to imply Daichi  _ would _ get caught. 

“Okay,” said Daichi, holding up his hand to forestall any protests, “that settles it. I’m definitely going to get us some beer.”

If possible, Suga’s eyes widened even more — but now he seemed more interested in seeing Daichi shoplift than admonishing him. Daichi set off for the supermarket at a quick pace, using his most powerful, confident stride in an effort to pep-talk himself. Suga hurried after him.

In truth, Daichi had shoplifted before, although it was only small things. Umaibo, mochi, sometimes cold drinks from the freezer. He was almost certain Suga had done the same thing, but after seeing his reaction to the mere suggestion of shoplifting, Daichi was starting to have some major doubts — could the outrage and horror have been an act? Sometimes Suga did that. He put on what he thought were exaggerated emotions as a joke, but to everyone else, they just seemed like normal (or even a little mild) reactions to the situation at hand.

That was the thing with Suga, Daichi thought. He didn’t realize it, but his own emotions were very muted compared to everyone else at school. The only emotion he expressed openly and enthusiastically was joy, and he expressed that a lot — but the rest of his emotions came with a blank face and a quiet, toneless voice, making him almost impossible to read. You couldn’t tell if he was furious, you couldn’t tell if he was depressed; and if he suddenly became blank like that, you couldn’t even guarantee he was feeling anything. His angry face, his sad face, and his neutral face were all the same.

Daichi shot a quick look at Suga. He didn’t look neutral now; there was a bounce in his step, and he had that wide-eyed look of innocent curiosity that Daichi knew so well.

They were almost to the supermarket. At the edge of the lot, Daichi put a hand on Suga’s arm, stopping him.

“You have to come in, too,” he said.

“Okay,” said Suga readily.

“I mean, you have to take something, too,” said Daichi, trying not to let on how nervous he was. Getting caught with stolen umaibo was bad enough; getting caught with stolen alcohol was an entirely different ballpark. 

“Okay,” said Suga again, still smiling. Daichi wilted a little at that.

“I thought you were nervous about this,” he whispered, as though anyone coming out of the store could hear them.

“No,” said Suga, looking genuinely surprised. “I just thought you shouldn’t do it. But then I figured, why not? If we get in trouble, who cares? It’s not the end of the world.” Before Daichi could think of a response, Suga lit up with the sunniest smile of the day (so far), practically radiating calmness, serenity, peace. “Besides,” he said, “we’re almost done with school. Even if we get kicked out, we only have to take a handful of exams and we’ll get our diplomas anyway.”

Daichi’s stomach knotted up a little tighter at the thought of that. But at the same time, his palms were sweating and his adrenaline was up, and he felt the same way he did right at the height of a long run, when he felt like he could push his body to do anything.

“Okay,” he said, starting to smile, too. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

They reached Daichi’s house with two bottles of chu-hai hidden in the inner pockets of their jackets, and with a bag of legitimately-purchased steamed pork buns dangling from Suga’s hand. The underarms of Daichi’s t-shirt were soaked with sweat, but he felt good; his legs were trembling and a little weak and he felt lighter than air.

He couldn’t stop smiling, either. He wasn’t sure if that was because of the shoplifting or if it was just a byproduct of being around Suga. 

They tore their sneakers off as they entered the house, both of them leaning against the walls and balancing on one leg to do so. In the kitchen, Suga deposited the steamed buns on the counter and shelved his bottles of chu-hai in Daichi’s fridge; Daichi did the same. He could hear his siblings arguing in the other room, fighting over the old PlayStation. They never seemed to go outside.

“Attic’s this way,” he said, waving Suga after him into the hall.

“I know where it is,” said Suga, amused, but he followed Daichi anyway. In the hallway, Daichi pulled a chair into the center of the floor and stood on it to pull the trap door down, unfolding a spindly wooden ladder. Suga helped him walk it down to the floor, where it scraped a little against the woven rug.

Daichi climbed up first, going hand over hand into the darkness above him. As he got closer to the top, he saw a bit of natural light coming through, and remembered only half a second before he saw it that there was a window at the top of the stairs. He paused up there, his forearms resting on the musty old carpet.

The window was open, with a transparent stormproof panel protecting the attic from any potential rain. Against that panel was a little bird nest; beside it, blinking curiously at Daichi, was a sleek little pigeon, its eyes nothing more than little black dots against slate-gray feathers. 

“What is it?” Suga called from downstairs when Daichi didn’t move. Reluctantly, Daichi pulled himself up into the attic, scooting across the floor and away from the floorboards. Suga came up a moment later, his head appearing through the hole in the floor. He spotted the bird immediately and turned to Daichi with a big smile on his face.

“You have a pet already,” he said. “What’s its name?”

“Koko-chan,” said Daichi. It was the first name that came to mind, and Suga immediately made a face at it, sticking his tongue out in disgust. “Oh, you come up with something better, then,” said Daichi.

“Sadako-chan,” said Suga immediately. He put his finger against the glass, just barely touching it. The bird didn’t seem to mind. “Ooh, or Tomie-chan.”

“No horror-movie names,” Daichi said. He stood up, wiping the dust off his trousers, and glanced around the attic. Dimly, he was aware of Suga clambering up off the ladder to join him. There were old boxes stacked against the walls and a big, ancient dresser in the far corner — Daichi had no idea how the previous owners had wrestled it up that flimsy little ladder. 

Other than that, there were small pieces of furniture — chairs and low coffee tables and a desk that looked just as big and unmoveable as the dresser — scattered all over the room. Daichi wove around a stack of boxes, making his way toward another window set higher up in the wall on the other side of the attic. This one looked out onto the roof; he’d been up here a few times when he was a kid, to help his dad out with the roofing. Now, he wrenched the window up just to let in some fresh air.

He turned back to find Suga smiling at him, waiting for orders.

“Alright,” said Daichi, “let’s get to it, then.”

* * *

They crawled on their hands and knees for more than an hour, tearing up the thin, musty carpet with only their fingernails — at the end of it, Daichi wasn’t sure he had any fingernails  _ left _ . Periodically, they stopped, staggering to their feet — sore from sitting hunched over for so long — and worked together to move some piece of furniture or stack of boxes so they could pull up the carpet underneath.

The tatami mats underneath were badly damaged, each one covered in a black, decaying putty from the late 70s which had since turned almost entirely to dust. They pulled them up one by one, throwing them into a loose pile in the center of the room. Daichi was prying up one of the last mats when Suga disappeared down the ladder, holding two other mats under one arm and using the other to climb down. 

Leaning out the window, Daichi had a perfect view as Suga crossed the lawn to the old brown dumpster on the corner of the street. He threw the tatami mats in and stood there a moment, his hands on his hips, before turning to squint up at Daichi. Daichi waved; he couldn’t be sure if Suga saw him, because of the angle of the sun, but after a moment, Suga waved back.

A minute later, he was clambering back up the ladder again and hoisting himself onto the attic floor. Both their jackets were long deserted; they’d thrown them down into the hallway below shortly after they started working, leaving both of them in their t-shirts. Suga sat on the lip of the trapdoor for a moment, his legs dangling, and watched Daichi pull up the last tatami mat with a line between his eyebrows.

“Maybe one of us should get on the roof,” Suga suggested. “And the other can hand him the mats and scraps of carpet through the window. That way we don’t have to make so many trips up and down the ladder; we’d just have to make one trip at the end to pick all the garbage off the lawn and throw it away.”

“Oh.” Daichi glanced over his shoulder at the open window. Dust swirled all around the room, visible in the evening light. “Good idea,” he said. “I better go out, though. I mean, in case I fall — it’s my house, so …”

Suga shrugged and nodded at the same time. He heaved to his feet right as Daichi made for the open window, so he was right there to help Daichi climb through when he needed to. Outside, Daichi took a moment to find his balance — the roof was slanted — and then turned back to the window again, where a big roll of carpet was already poking through.

He took it from Suga, who wasn’t even visible behind all that mite-infested fabric. Edging toward the side of the roof, Daichi got as close to the open air as he could and hurled the carpet down into the grass. When he turned back, Suga was leaning out the window to watch him, a small stack of tatami mats in his arms and a smile on his face.

They worked steadily, removing every trace of debris from the attic, sweeping often in a desperate attempt to remove the piles of black dust. The dresser came apart easily, and they took it down the ladder with great care. The boxes could all be thrown away — or at least, Daichi was confident his parents wouldn’t miss them. 

They carted them to the dumpster together just as the sun was going down, leaving the street dark and the air cool. It was surprisingly quick work to take apart the cheap futon in Daichi’s bedroom and move it upstairs; they boxed up the items in his desk — his CDs, his VHS tapes, a few well-thumbed sports magazines and schoolbooks — and brought them up as well.

Insects chirped. The stars came out. The pigeon in the window — Koko-chan or Sadako-chan or whatever her name was — closed her eyes and breathed deeply when they passed her. They fetched the cold cans of chu-hai from the fridge and brought them back upstairs with them.

Daichi knelt before one of the scuffed-up old coffee tables, hooking his battered old VHS player up to a grimy old TV they’d found, which was plugged into an exposed wall outlet nearby. Behind him, Suga hopped up on the window sill and cracked open one of the cans of chu-hai, staring up at the sky outside.

From the cardboard box of possessions they’d brought up with them, Daichi selected his favorite VHS tape — the one he’d teased Suga about earlier, Rock Video Monthly. It was nothing but music videos, all taken from MTVJapan in the late 90s, when Suga and Daichi were just kids. He sipped his chu-hai as the first video played, savoring the fizzy lemon flavor and the subtle bite of alcohol coating his tongue.

Wind filtered through the window — a gentle breeze just strong enough to make Suga’s t-shirt flutter against him. Goosebumps stood out on Daichi’s arms, just from the chill. He turned the music up, letting it fill the room and leak out into the night.

When he had a pleasant buzz going and both the alcohol and the music were sinking thoroughly into his brain, he joined Suga, who scooted over on the window sill to give Daichi room. They looked out at the roof, at the river glistening in the distance, at the stars. After a moment, Suga shifted a little, lifting his can of chu-hai to his lips; this movement brought the bare skin of his forearm into Daichi’s line of sight, revealing goosebumps just like his own, and a shallow but angry-looking cut that curved from his wrist all the way up to his elbow.

Daichi paused, swirling the lemon-flavored alcohol around his mouth a moment before swallowing. He gestured at Suga’s arm with the same hand holding his can of chu-hai, freeing one finger to point at the scar.

“What happened?” he asked.

Suga didn’t even glance down at the cut. “I got caught on one of the dresser drawers when we were bringing them downstairs,” he said.

“Oh.” Daichi eyed it a moment longer. There was something wrong about it; he couldn’t put his finger on what. Eventually, he cast the whole problem aside, letting the old music take over his brain, letting his eyes swivel back to the stars gleaming over Karumai.

One video bled into the next. They finished their first cans of chu-hai and moved on to the second, sharing the steamed pork buns as the night grew colder. Their thighs were pressed against each other, Suga’s warmth feeding into Daichi’s. Their elbows touched; sometimes, one of them shifted and jostled the other accidentally, and when that happened each of them would smile, an apology silently offered and accepted.

The moon came out. The dust in the attic settled. The VHS tape wound down to its very last song.

“I want to stay here forever,” Daichi said.


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s March,” Kaa-san said.

Suga sat on the raised platform beside their door, busy lacing up his sneakers. When Kaa-san spoke, he kept tying his knots, but now he did it without looking so he could glance up at her and try to gauge the expression on her face. She stood by the open window in the shabby scrubs she always wore to bed, blowing cigarette smoke outside.

She hadn’t gone to work today. Maybe her shifts changed; maybe she took an extra one last night and now she had today off, and Suga simply hadn’t noticed because he’d been at Daichi’s all night, hanging out in the attic.

A blister pack of pills lay on the table between Kaa-san’s ashtray and a half-empty plastic water bottle. There were crescent-shaped slices in the tinfoil over every empty slot from where Kaa-san had used her thumbnail to cut through.

Suga finished tying his shoes. He sat there for a moment, adjusting the cuffs of his joggers, waiting for Kaa-san to speak again. Eventually, she turned at the waist, leaning against the wall to stare at him.

“For graduation,” she said, as if Suga didn’t know. “You’ll need a suit.”

“Yes,” he said. He didn’t know where he was going to get one; it had been on his mind since the start of the school year last April, popping into his brain sporadically before winter break and constantly afterward. The secondhand shops here in Karumai carried plenty of old kimonos, but no suits. He’d taken the bus to nearby cities a few times and looked there, but the blazers he found were all too trendy for a ceremony — some red, some floral, one covered in sunflowers.

Admittedly, he liked the sunflowers. He couldn’t wear it to school, though. He wrapped his arms around his knees and thought for a moment, his mind circling uselessly around the same old ideas he’d gone over a million times since December.

“I could borrow one,” he said. “From someone in college.”

Kaa-san didn’t bother to respond to that. He’d been decently close to a few upperclassmen, but he only got his phone this year, so he didn’t have any of their numbers saved. There was a slim chance one of them might visit home, and Suga might happen across them in the street, and that person might happen to have an old suit he could borrow — but there was nothing to be gained from counting on pure coincidence like that. 

And Kaa-san wasn’t friends with any of the other mothers in town. Not close enough to ask them if they had old suits Suga might fit into. She didn’t have any friends at all, really — when Suga was younger she had a few, but there had always been a quiet falling-out of some sort, a devastating behind-the-scenes betrayal that Suga was never fully informed about and certainly never witnessed himself. Part of him wondered if Kaa-san didn’t like to have friends, if she ended her friendships on purpose because she got tired of people.

She stood across from him, her eyes dull and far away, her hair tangled from sleep. There were deep bags beneath her eyes, but she still looked beautiful, Suga thought. Especially with the sunlight filtering through behind her like that. He wanted to freeze that snapshot of her in his mind forever — tired and wiry and all glazed-over, but beautiful. 

She was still waiting for an answer. Suga laced his fingers together around his knees.

“I could ask around at school,” he suggested.

Kaa-san leaned out the window and flicked ashes off the end of her cigarette. Looking out toward the empty fields, she said, “Or you could ask Hirosue-san.”

Suga didn’t answer right away. He stared down at his interlocked fingers. He used his thumb to scrape at a healing blister on his forefinger, taking in the dull edge of pain like a breath of fresh air.

“I don’t know,” he said. Kaa-san kept staring out the window, so that all Suga could see of her was her grey-ish hair — so similar to his own — and the sunlight playing over the shell of her ear.

“You have to do something, Koushi,” she said. “You know I can’t afford a suit.”

Suga kept digging his thumbnail into his blister. “Yeah,” he said, “I know.”

For a while, the silence stretched between them. They hadn’t talked yet about what Suga would do when school was done; in his three years at Karasuno, Kaa-san had never brought up the prospect of Suga continuing on to college, and part of him was grateful for that while the other part dreaded that someday she would suddenly remember and ask him why he hadn’t sent out applications or taken any exams. 

“Are you going to ask him?” Kaa-san asked.

Reluctantly, Suga stopped digging at the blister on his forefinger. He sat on his hands to keep himself from scratching at the cut on his arm instead. “Today?” he asked.

Kaa-san threw him a blank look, letting Suga interpret all kinds of awful things from her expressionless features. “Yes, today,” she said firmly. “You don’t have that long till graduation, Koushi.”

The sole of his left shoe was peeling off. He slid one hand out from beneath his thigh and picked at the rubber. 

“Do you need more pills?” he asked, looking at the floor. He saw his mother shake her head from the corner of his eye; for some reason, this didn’t bring him the relief he thought it would. Instead, it left him feeling hollowed out and exhausted.

He left the apartment with that feeling still eating at him, sitting heavy in his stomach. He jogged down the stairwell and out the front door, feeling in his pockets for his mp3 player. The earbuds were all tangled up and he unknotted them automatically, not even glancing down as he worked them free.

It was a struggle to select a song and press play when he was still going down the street at a jog, but he needed to run — now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop. Eventually — arms pumping, the small screen on the mp3 player just a blur — he got it to work and music funneled into his ears, a little too loud for comfort. 

He let it play just the way it was, keeping the mp3 player in his hand as he ran, his thumb slipping on and off of the “skip” button. He hated running, really — he wasn’t like Daichi, who ran every day, rain or shine. But he kind of liked it, too, for all the same reasons he hated it. There was really nothing in the world like running; it gave your chest that thick, painful feeling, like Suga imagined pneumonia must feel like — and it got you breathing so fast that your throat started hurting — and it made your thighs burn and your ribs ache, but there was something nice about all those things, something addictive about pushing through.

Through the music in his earbuds, he could just make out the slapping sound of his loose sole against the pavement. He reached the entrance to Hirosue-san’s street and didn’t hesitate before turning the opposite way.

He’d visit Hirosue-san today like Kaa-san asked, and he’d ask him for a graduation suit. But he’d do it later. He had no reason to do it now.

He could visit Daichi first. He could stop by the convenience store; he could sit outside on the banks of the river and let the sun beat down on his back and watch the minnows swim by.

Suddenly, his stomach didn’t feel heavy anymore.

He could run forever.

* * *

Daichi was still up; he hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, really, and now his lids hung low and his eyes itched, but he was hopelessly awake. At first he’d stayed up because Suga was over, because they were having so much fun — first sitting on the window together, then climbing out onto the roof to get a better look at the stars. 

They’d wrestled each other; they’d pushed each other, both laughing, both fighting for the high ground on the slanted roof. And he’d almost gone over the edge once, but Suga had grabbed onto his arm and pulled him back before that could happen, and it hadn’t bothered either of them a bit at the time.

Then, once they’d climbed back inside, he’d stayed up because they were watching Rock Video Monthly, going steadily through every single tape in the collection. And then he’d stayed up because the sun was rising; and then he’d stayed up because Suga was going home; and then he’d had no choice but to stay up because it was 7 a.m. and he could hear his little brother and sister downstairs, trying to make themselves breakfast.

He leaned against the window sill in the attic; he was facing the street when he saw Suga jog up and pull his earbuds out to talk to Daichi’s little brother, who was playing in the grass lot next door. 

Daichi watched Suga ask a question; he watched his little brother turn and point up at the attic window. That gave him a peculiar sense of satisfaction, though of course he’d known right away that Suga was looking for him. He pushed himself away from the window, tried to shake the sleepiness out of himself, and headed downstairs.

Suga was standing in the open doorway already, waiting for Daichi. He had one earbud in, but he took it out and smiled when he saw Daichi coming.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Daichi. He felt his lips curling up in an involuntary smile. “You’re up early.”

Suga made a big show of looking at his wrist, even though he’d left his watch at home. Daichi glanced at the clock and was unsurprised to see it was past noon. 

“I didn’t sleep,” Daichi confessed. With a teasing smile, Suga pointed to the bags beneath Daichi’s eyes, bringing his finger dangerously close to Daichi’s eyeball to see if he would flinch. Daichi held perfectly still, keeping his gaze on Suga’s face so he wouldn’t go cross-eyed.

“You look okay, though,” said Suga, finally relenting when Daichi refused to pull back. He glanced over his shoulder at the front door, craning his neck to see Daichi’s little brother. Behind them, the TV was blaring, giving away his sister’s location. 

He seemed to weigh something mentally; his face was almost entirely blank, but it was the same flavor of far-away thoughtfulness he got when thinking a game strategy through. Daichi knew that look well, so he didn’t interrupt. Eventually, Suga glanced back at him and bounced on his toes, eyebrows raised.

“Would you rather go upstairs or to the basement?” he asked. 

Daichi chewed the inside of his cheek. “I’ll fall asleep if we hang out inside,” he admitted.

“That’s fine.”

“No,” said Daichi, “I don’t want to fall asleep.”

This felt like too big of an admission, somehow, like he’d accidentally confessed to something he couldn’t even define; he carefully avoided Suga’s eyes.

“We can go outside, then,” said Suga, now staring out the window at the old houses and empty lots. “We can go up to the school and hang out there. Nobody’ll be there today.”

With an unnerving sense of relief, Daichi nodded. He called to his brother and sister in turn, warning each of them to stay safe and not break anything. His sister didn’t respond; his brother waved briefly at them as they walked past. 

The steep slope up to the school was a tough one, even for Daichi and Suga. They were both breathing through their mouths by the time they made it halfway up, but they weren’t really exhausted, just a little winded. Suga walked with his hands in the pockets of his volleyball club jacket, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. 

“Hey, Daichi,” he said after they’d been walking in silence for so long that Daichi got accustomed to it. “Do you have a suit for the graduation ceremony?”

Daichi furrowed his eyebrows. “Yeah,” he said, “don’t you?”

Suga widened his eyes and puffed out his cheeks. He didn’t shake his head or verbally respond, but the expression alone was an obvious “no.”

“Oh,” said Daichi. He thought back to the suit hanging in his parents’ closet; he’d last worn it two years ago and wasn’t sure it still fit right, but it was all he had. At the beginning of the year, he’d promised himself he would save up his money from the somen store and pay to get it tailored, but he’d blown most of the cash he had — first on club fees and bus fare, then on stupid things, like snacks and cigarettes and beer. 

“Do you know anyone at school who has one?” asked Suga tentatively. “An extra one, I mean?”

Again, Daichi chewed the inside of his cheek. “Maybe Furuhashi-kun,” he said. “He’s probably got two or three suits.”

Suga grimaced at that. “He has a bad attitude, though,” he said.

Daichi couldn’t argue with that; he didn’t see any possible world where Furuhashi-kun would let Suga borrow a suit. He was the sort of guy who would see a homeless man asking for change and say  _ Why don’t you just ask your dad for some money? That’s what I do. _

“We could catch a bus to Hachinohe,” Daichi suggested. “I bet the secondhand shops there will have a suit your size.”

Suga glanced sideways at him, offering Daichi a peculiarly sad smile. “Yeah,” he said, looking away again, kicking a pebble and sending it skittering away across the pavement. “Next weekend, maybe. I don’t have any money for the bus.”

“Me neither,” Daichi said. But next weekend he would — he’d make sure of it. He’d go without cigarettes to make sure he had the fare; he’d stop buying snacks on his way home from school. Already he could feel the sunlight streaming through the bus windows, the bump of country roads beneath the wheels. He could see the green rice fields and low mountains rolling by.

He could see Suga sitting next to him, his head resting on Daichi’s shoulder, fast asleep. 

He shook himself out of the daydream as they reached the schoolyard. The old stone steps leading up to the front door were badly in need of a power-wash; the concrete in the courtyard was cracked, with little green weeds and dandelions sprouting improbably through the stone. By silent agreement, he and Suga walked around the school to the baseball fields.

They stooped beneath the bleachers, lowering themselves onto the sun-warmed grass. Suga leaned back against a metal post while Daichi laid out on his back, the rain-damp weeds licking his neck and sticking to his skin, his arms thrown out carelessly above his head.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asked.

Suga blushed, looking away — no, not  _ away, _ Daichi thought. Usually when Suga avoided his eyes, he was staring far off into the distance. This was different; Suga was looking straight down at his hands, and there was something about that simple difference that made Daichi prop himself up on his elbows and try to catch Suga’s eye. He heard his heart beating in his ears; suddenly, his adrenaline was up.

“I don’t know,” said Suga, shrugging. “I didn’t want to talk, really. I don’t have anything to say.”

This would normally be an acceptable answer. They’d been friends for three years now; they’d hung out together countless times without any real reason, sometimes just sitting under the bleachers exactly like they were now, silently looking through magazines or watching other sports clubs practice on the field.

Only it was obvious now that Suga  _ did _ have something to say. Daichi stared at him a moment longer, a little line appearing between his eyebrows, and after a while Suga stopped fidgeting and looked up to meet his eyes. Suga’s mouth was set in a firm line; his eyes were determined. He stared right back at Daichi, daring him to push it.

But there was no way  _ anyone _ could out-stare Daichi. He dialed it up a notch, and a moment later Suga relented — not intimidated like some of their classmates would be, just recognizing the futility of a fight.

With an inaudible sigh that moved his shoulders up and down, Suga said, “I stole a knife from art class the other day.”

Not what Daichi was expecting. He shifted onto his right elbow, letting his left arm rest, and waited for Suga to go on.

“I just thought it was neat,” said Suga, though Daichi could tell this was only a partial truth. Maybe Suga  _ did _ think the knife was cool, but that wasn’t the only reason he stole it. “And the teacher doesn’t keep inventory, so he’ll never know it’s gone.”

Daichi waited a beat. When Suga didn’t continue, he said, “What kind of knife? You mean a whittling knife?”

Instead of answering aloud, Suga reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an Xacto. Its blade was sharp and uncovered, and it had just been jammed into his coat like that without any protective covering or case. Daichi sat up in alarm, unable to believe what he was seeing.

“You’ve been jogging with that in your pocket?” he exclaimed.

“Yeah,” said Suga. He had the good grace to look at least a  _ little _ abashed. “I didn’t know what else to do with it.”

He rolled it across his palm, flexing his fingers to send it back down toward his wrist again. He caught it with his thumb and flipped it over again, blade pointing up. The sun flashed off of it, blinding Daichi for just a second.

“Let me see it,” he said, holding out his hand. Suga gave him the knife without question. It was sharp as hell, Daichi noted; he didn’t need to touch it to know that. “What do you do with it?” he asked.

Uneasily, Suga shrugged. He started to scratch the cut on his arm, then stopped, his fingernails pressed lightly into the red, raw tissue that was only now knitting itself back together. When he glanced up and saw Daichi glaring at him, he knew he’d been caught — the guilt was written all over his face.

“Are you  _ serious? _ ” Daichi asked. “You did  _ that? _ ”

Suga put his hand over the cut, covering as much of it as he could. “Well…” he said.

“Was it an accident?”

The cut certainly  _ looked _ like an accident. It was long and thin and crooked, like the kind of scratch you got from running into a thorn bush.

“Well,” said Suga again, looking half-embarrassed and half-amused, like Daichi’s reaction was somehow funny. “I had to make it look like it was an accident, you know? I couldn’t just cut a straight line across my wrist. People would think I was depressed.”

Daichi opened his mouth and closed it again. His mouth was curving into a baffled smile, purely against his will. He shook his head, felt his eyes stinging and couldn’t tell if it was lack of sleep or something else. 

He looked at the cut, at the knife in his hand, at Suga’s face. At Suga, who clearly — desperately — wanted Daichi to believe he was fine.

“Why did you do it, then?” Daichi asked finally, his voice sounding flat and hollowed-out. “If you’re not depressed?”

Suga scratched at his arm. He bit his lip. He didn’t answer.

Maybe he didn’t know himself.

* * *

For one long, awful moment, Suga had been sure Daichi would ask to keep the knife. He could see it vividly in his mind’s eye — Daichi’s hand stretched out, palm up, his voice firm as he gave the order for Suga to surrender the Xacto. He’d throw it away on his walk home, Suga was sure, or he’d find some way to surreptitiously return it to the school. Or maybe he’d even keep it, driven by the same morbid curiosity Suga was — but whatever he did, it would be gone from Suga’s hands, and he’d never see it again. 

But Daichi didn’t take the knife. He’d wanted to; he’d considered it. That much had been clear from the look in his eyes just before he sat up and handed it back over to Suga. The knife was in Suga’s pocket now, the blade pointed away from his body, his right hand wrapped loosely around the handle as he walked.

It was past dusk when he made it to Hirosue-san’s house. He stood on the doorstep, staring at the worn wood and fading, chipped paint. For a long moment he just stood there, making no move to take his shoes off or knock.

He remembered the salty taste of Hirosue-san’s skin, the unpleasant unwashed odor of it filling Suga’s nostrils, the memory of pubic hair brushing against his nose making his lips twist. His knees ached just remembered the hard floor underneath him; his jaw ached remembering how long it had taken Hirosue-san to….

Suga couldn’t quite bring himself to put a word to that moment, not even mentally. It had tasted so different from what he’d thought it would be like — salty and bitter, but not exactly bad. It was sort of like coffee or alcohol or even an energy drink, like that. He’d swallowed it automatically, without even thinking, and then Hirosue-san had been delighted and told him, “You know you could have spit out, right?” and Suga had been embarrassed, cheeks burning hot as he wiped his mouth and stood.

He mulled it over on the doorstep, thinking it all through clinically. He hadn’t liked it, he told himself. He hadn’t wanted to do it; if Hirosue-san hadn’t forced him, he would never have thought about it on his own.

But he had liked it, all the same, just as much as he’d hated it. The smell and the feeling of pubic hair on his nose, those had been awful. But he’d liked the taste; he’d liked the feeling of another man’s cock in his mouth, and his heart had been pounding with fear and excitement all at the same time. 

Another  _ man. _ Just thinking about it now started him shaking, and not in an entirely unpleasant way. It was something he’d forced himself not to think about, something he’d pushed deep into the back of his mind and successfully ignored since he was a kid. 

He thought about what he’d done that night, afterward. How he’d gone home and closed himself in his room and almost cried. How he’d pulled his bedside table in front of the door just in case Kaa-san came home. The way he’d touched himself afterward, his hand hidden underneath the blanket, his eyes fixed on the ceiling and leaking water the whole time.

He hadn’t thought about Hirosue-san, exactly — but he’d been thinking about that heavy cock in his mouth, the taste of another man’s skin. Standing in front of the door now, he remembered all this and thought he might vomit; his eyes stung, his throat tightened. His face was flushed with shame.

And then, before he could get himself under control, the door was open and Hirosue-san was standing there staring at him, face blank and unimpressed. 

“Thought you’d be back,” he said. He stood back, leaving space for Suga to enter. “Come in.”

Suga stared at the floorboards of Hirosue-san’s house. The blood in his cheeks cooled; his color faded away, leaving him feeling shaky and fragile.

“I need a suit,” he said, still standing outside.

Hirosue-san grunted and waved him in. After a moment, refusing to let himself think about what he was doing, Suga unglued his feet from the doorstep and stepped inside. He left his shoes on, and Hirosue-san must have noticed, but he didn’t say a word.

Inside, things became easier. More natural, more familiar. Suga was still standing there in the center of the room when Hirosue-san brushed past him, heading to the kitchen. 

“I’ll grab you a beer,” he said over his shoulder.

Suga murmured his thanks automatically; he brought his left hand up and tried to rub the tremors out of his arm. He kept his right hand in his pocket, fingers curled around the knife. It never occurred to him to use it — there was no reason to — but it comforted him to feel it there.

Hirosue-san brought back a beer, stronger and more expensive than Suga’s usual brand. He liked it immediately but took it in little sips, casting his eyes around the room. Everywhere but Hirosue-san.

“I don’t have a suit,” Hirosue-san said finally, his voice flat. “But I can probably spare a few thousand yen for one if you need it. You can take the bus to Hachinohe; there’s a classy little discount store there that has cheap suits.”

Suga nodded. He found himself thinking of Daichi, of the bus ride they’d planned for no real reason except to get away. It didn’t give him any satisfaction to know they could really do it, now. It just made him feel hollow.

He kept his head angled to the left, his eyes fixed on the ripped paper panes in Hirosue-san’s bedroom door. He could see Hirosue-san out of the corner of his eye, just standing there, smoking a cigarette and saying nothing.

Eventually, dimly, he heard Hirosue-san sigh.

“You liked it,” said Hirosue-san. His tone was firm, decisive. There was no doubt at all in his voice.

“Yeah,” said Suga, because he didn’t know what else to say. Hirosue-san dragged on his cigarette, silently allowing smoke to escape from between his dry, thin lips.

“I got something to show you,” he said. “Wait here.”

Suga waited; he didn’t look around Hirosue-san’s house while he was shuffling around in the other room. Instead, he kept his eyes on the door and his hand on the knife.

Not long after he left, Hirosue-san returned with a loose pile of items in his hands — a tattered old paperback, a handful of Polaroids, a VHS tape in a battered, generic-looking case. He rifled through them, changing the order they were stacked in, as he approached Suga. Ash gathered at the end of his cigarette and plummeted to the floor. 

“Here,” he said, and handed Suga the paperback. He had his finger stuck in the book, so Suga took it and opened it directly to that page. “You like horror, don’t you?” Hirosue-san asked.

Suga didn’t respond. He peeked at the cover of his book:  _ Mask _ by Mishima Yukio. He opened the book again, this time reluctantly interested. They’d forbidden Mishima’s books at Karasuno, and this one in particular. He had a vague idea why.

Hirosue-san stood there, silently smoking, while Suga read the passage. The narrator, a young boy, related how he’d found an illustration of Saint Sebastian in one of his father’s books. The image was gory; the saint was in pain, was dying. But he was almost completely nude, and he was beautiful even as he died.

Without speaking, Suga handed the book back. Equally silent, Hirosue-san traded him for the photos. They were old and starting to fade away entirely, but the images were still fairly clear. Suga stared at the naked bodies of young men around the same age as him, some of them standing outside in Hirosue-san’s backyard — only in the 70s, when these pictures must have been taken, the backyard was filled with trees. 

He shuffled through the photographs, his eyes drawn to the thatch of dark hair between each boy’s legs. He couldn’t be sure if some of them were older or younger than him. Some of them might still live around here; they might be men he knew, men he saw every day. Disquieted, he handed the photos back.

“You got a VCR?” Hirosue-san asked, holding the battered VHS up next. “You know how to use this?”

Suga took the tape, staring at it like he’d never seen one before, like he wasn’t sure how to hold it. It lay flat in his palms, like a dead fish that had just finished flopping and gasping in the open air. 

“Yes,” he said.

“Take it,” said Hirosue-san. “You’ll like it.”

And then he pressed something else into Suga’s free hand. His fingers were hot and sweaty, and he didn’t pull away so Suga could see what new gift he’d been given. He didn’t need to see it, though; he knew the feel of a plastic blister pack against his palm.

“And take these pills, and don’t come back if you don’t want to,” Hirosue-san said. 

Suga stared down at Hirosue-san’s hand, cupped over his own. His throat felt tight again. His voice, when he spoke, didn’t sound like it belonged to him.

“What are they for?” he asked. He could hear a note of desperation in his voice, and he knew Hirosue-san could hear it, too. “The pills,” he said. “Why does she need them? What do they do? She won’t tell me. She just says she needs them for work.”

Hirosue-san’s flat, dead eyes were focused on him and Suga met them without flinching, suddenly determined to know. If he couldn’t get it from Kaa-san, he’d find out here and now. He wouldn’t leave until he knew.

Eventually, those flat eyes blinked.

“She does need them,” said Hirosue-san, his tone as dull as his eyes. “Every adult you’ve ever met in this town needs something like that. You never noticed before?”

Suga said nothing.

“Salarymen get drunk,” said Hirosue-san. “Teens like you steal beer from the supermarket and drink it to help them sleep at night. Housewives take pills. You do what you have to do, Koushi.”

Suga closed his eyes, unable to bear the intimate sound of his name, unadorned with any type of suffix, coming from Hirosue-san’s mouth.

“You need to get through your day somehow,” said Hirosue-san matter-of-factly. “So you numb yourself a little. If you don’t, you go crazy and you wind up killing yourself. You jump off a building, you slit your wrists. That’s life, kid. It just sucks, and you do what you can to get by.”

Suga stared down at the pills in his hand, suddenly blinking back tears. He shook his head, unable to speak, and Hirosue-san laid his other palm on Suga’s cheek, damp and warm and heavy. Suga held very still, trying not to flinch. “I’m good to you,” said Hirosue-san. He lifted his palm away and put it back, patting Suga’s cheek. “I’m just looking out for you, Koushi. There aren’t a lot of us around here. We have to stick together, okay?”

“Okay,” said Suga. His cheeks were flushed, eyes stinging, anger choking him. Not at being touched — at Hirosue-san’s words, at his insistence that everyone needed to be numb. He couldn’t pull away, but he could look away. He could stare at the carpet, at the hole in his socks, at Hirosue-san’s bare feet. He could pretend those feet belonged to somebody else — his father, his grandfather — that he was somewhere else entirely, with someone else’s hand upon his cheek.

Hirosue-san’s thumb brushed Suga’s cheekbone then, the ragged edge of his thumbnail pinching down on Suga’s lower lid, making his lashes flutter in a reflexive wince. 

“You can come back for pills any time,” said Hirosue-san, his voice low and gentle, the smell of seaweed on his breath. “You don’t have to do anything for them.”

He let his hand slip away, leaving Suga cold. He dug in his wallet, came out with a handful of bills that Suga took without even the slightest feeling of gratitude or excitement. 

“All we have is each other, Koushi,” said Hirosue-san. He said it confidently, like it was a well-established fact. “I’m your only friend in this shitty little town.”

Suga found himself on the doorstep not long after, confused and angry and still almost crying. He crushed the blister pack of pills in his fist.

_ But you’re not my only friend,  _ he thought fiercely, letting the tears roll over his lower lashes. He pictured Daichi handing the knife back, knowing Suga, trusting him not to do anything so stupid again.

_ And this town isn’t shitty,  _ Suga thought, _ it’s good. It’s a good place, and the river is beautiful in the morning, and the people in the shops are always nice to me, and I wouldn’t want to grow up anywhere else in the world.  _

_ Nowhere else at all.  _


End file.
